TSF Book Club
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[quote name='Donsteppa' timestamp='1360832171' post='344044']<br />
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There's a really decent finish to New Spring, but parts of it are quite skimmable...[/quote]<br />
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Reading them back to back its pretty clear that Jordan must haver been surrounded by some fucking angry women during his life. Some of these cows must have been in a permanent state of PMT.<br /> -
[quote name='NTA' timestamp='1360752473' post='343827']<br />
Started reading Wheel of Time again - kicked off with the prequel book I'd never read before.<br />
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Have to say the constant references to men being wool headed idiots, and women running everything, is starting to wear thin...<br />
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Thankfully Sanderosn spends no time in the 'men are shit, woman are boss' mindset that Jordan seemed to love -
David and Leigh Eddings, you mean. That was fun reading back when I was a teen.<br />
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No man would put up with the shit that Nynaeve tries on. Lan clearly had a death wish - he said he could never give a bride funeral clothes as a wedding dress, but his real motive is just to spare some other poor bloke from ending up with the permanently grumpy bitch. He's a trooper. -
[quote name='NTA' timestamp='1361917793' post='347396']<br />
[b]David and Leigh Eddings, you mean. That was fun reading back when I was a teen[/b].<br />
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No man would put up with the shit that Nynaeve tries on. Lan clearly had a death wish - he said he could never give a bride funeral clothes as a wedding dress, but his real motive is just to spare some other poor bloke from ending up with the permanently grumpy bitch. He's a trooper.<br />
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I read the Belgariad, the Mallorean, The Elenium and the Tamuli last year. Probably for about the 6th time each. I still think they are great. It's not exactly hard going, or particularly deep, but i like his characters, they are generally pretty funny.<br />
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They tend to fall into the trap of annoying as fuck female characters as well. The main ones in each story, Ce'Nedra and Ehlana are fucking annoying, and i kind of wanted them both to die. I bet their husband's did as well.<br />
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This is what comes from working with your wife. -
[quote name='mariner4life' timestamp='1361929592' post='347442']<br />
[b]I read the Belgariad, the Mallorean, The Elenium and the Tamuli last year. Probably for about the 6th time each.[/b] I still think they are great. It's not exactly hard going, or particularly deep, but i like his characters, they are generally pretty funny.<br />
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They tend to fall into the trap of annoying as fuck female characters as well. The main ones in each story, Ce'Nedra and Ehlana are fucking annoying, and i kind of wanted them both to die. I bet their husband's did as well.<br />
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This is what comes from working with your wife.<br />
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Holy shit. I've never want to hear a criticism of Star Trek again. <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/rugby/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' /> -
wanting and getting are two completly different things.
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Finished Terry Brooks Wards of Faerie, pretty good, if not a bit short....<br />
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Picked up Conn Igguldens [i]Conqueror[/i] at the library today, which is the last in the series (from Genghis Khan to Kublai Khan) so been wanting to read this for a while but never been in the library, except today. -
[quote name='taniwharugby' timestamp='1361931069' post='347451']<br />
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Picked up Conn Igguldens [i]Conqueror[/i] at the library today, which is the last in the series (from Genghis Khan to Kublai Khan) so been wanting to read this for a while but never been in the library, except today.<br />
[/quote]<br />
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Snap!<br />
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Finally getting around to Conqueror as well. I read the others in short succession quite a while back so it's hard to remember who is who now.<br />
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Also saw on the weekend that Iggulden is revisting the Emperor series see [url="http://www.conniggulden.com/2013/emperor-blood-of-gods-2/"]http://www.conniggulden.com/2013/emperor-blood-of-gods-2/[/url] -
Had to finish another book and only just started it the other day, but like you I red the others fairly quickly, it is tough remembering which line so and so is from I have to refer to the family tree at the front. <br />
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Good so far -
Finally finished Peter F Hamilton's [i]Great North Road. [/i]The book did improve in the second half but when you're talking about a book that's over one thousand pages you're dealing with a lot of faff.<br />
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In particular I found that the Newcastle police procedural scenes were boring as hell, lacking in good characters or a exciting narrative. There's only so many times I can read about people using secondary bank accounts to hide their income from the government before I switch off - and I'm an accountant.<br />
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The multiple narratives did tie together at the end although I did have some questions about whether the timeline and the justification for leaving the expedition team isolated on the alien planet seemed extremely contrived.<br />
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Two books I would recommend are [i]Fighters Heart[/i] and [i]Fighters Mind[/i] by Sam Sheridan. The first is a personal journey style book in which Sheridan travelled to Thailand, Brazil, Japan and throughout America training with and talking to professional fighters with the goal of stepping into the ring. The second book is similar but, as the title suggests, looks more at the mental side of fighting. Both well-written books even if you're not a big fight fan. -
[quote name='dogmeat' timestamp='1361915881' post='347379']By the time I gave up on him I'd decided Jordan was simply a bloated David Eddings.[/quote]<br />
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I do have to laugh whenever they say "taint" though. Especially "cleansing the taint" like it's a big deal - have a shower if your taint is dirty! -
[quote name='Catogrande' timestamp='1357742312' post='336376']<br />
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Secondly Phillip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series about sometime cop, sometime PI in pre and post war Berlin and then onward to Argentina and so on. Start off with the Omnibus edition named Berlin Noir.<br />
[/quote]Think I must have missed this post at the time Cato but I loved this series of books, read them a while back and not only are they well written crime stories, they're also brilliantly descriptive of Germany in the 30s and then beyond. -
Anybody else read Wool yet?<br />
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First published as an e-book and now available in real form, it's a dystopian, sci-fi whodunnit of sorts focused on a community of survivors buried in an underground silo. Sounds a bit, 'meh' but I absolutely flew through this book and loved every bit of it.<br />
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There's been a lot of chatter about Wool being sc-fi's Fifty Shades of Grey and Ridley Scott has optioned it. The author has since inked a deal with a major publisher but in a groundbreaking move has retained the electric publishing rights for himself. Nobody is quite sure if that's a good move or not .... for the publisher.<br />
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Five stars for me. -
Finished Good Omens (by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) which I purchased from the Harvard Book Store in Boston because I felt I should purchase something from there. Laughed the whole way through it (my type of humour). About the son of Satan, the apocalypse, and an angel and a demon trying to stop it when their bosses want it to happen. 9/10
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[quote name='Sneakdefreak' timestamp='1364378483' post='355156']<br />
Finished Good Omens (by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) which I purchased from the Harvard Book Store in Boston because I felt I should purchase something from there. Laughed the whole way through it (my type of humour). About the son of Satan, the apocalypse, and an angel and a demon trying to stop it when their bosses want it to happen. 9/10<br />
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Terry Pratchett is one of my favourites. Always on the look out for new Discworld books (although he's gone a bit same same recently).<br />
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My first experience of him was [i]Reaper Man[/i] - pissed myself laughing: Death (i.e., the Grim Reaper) is focred into retirement and takes up work on a farm. Also really enjoyed [i]Guards! Guards![/i] and [i]Pyramids[/i].<br />
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Read [i]Good Omens [/i]years ago - and it is very funny. -
[quote name='booboo' timestamp='1364420391' post='355238']<br />
Terry Pratchett is one of my favourites. Always on the look out for new Discworld books ([b]although he's gone a bit same same recently[/b]).<br />
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[/quote]he probably doesn't realise that... -
[b]"You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup"[/b] by Peter Doggett (2010). This one kinda fell in my lap, and I couldn't put it down. I'm not a huge fan of the Beatles, certainly not since I was a young kid and a minor relapse in my teenage years, but I found this absorbing. It's kinda book-ended by the deaths of Brian Epstein and John Lennon, and deals with the Apple debacle and why the band divided (not Yoko as most assume, but more an acrimonious management struggle between McCartney and the other three). Doggett doesn't interview the members so much as digest every thing ever written about them (paying particular attention to quotes from the musicians themselves in real time, as well as their revised versions years after-the-fact) and weaving it into a compelling condensed narrative. Behind the scenes it seems money and fame, and especially near-religious adulation, makes people insane. Every Beatle comes across as a nut-job, none more so than Lennon, but all seem just as equally forgivable and likable. Really good juicy stuff for those whose eyes glaze over at all the sanitized authorized official Beatles hagiographies that hide the warts & sex & drugs, etc.
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[quote name='Dodge' timestamp='1364420494' post='355240']<br />
he probably doesn't realise that...<br />
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Ah I see ...<br />
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... so no more Discworld <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/rugby/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':(' /> -
[b][i]Bad Science[/i][/b] by Ben Goldacre:<br />
- An exploration of the misunderstanding, misuse and misapplication of science in mainstream media and public relations, and how public conceptions have been manipulated as a result.<br />
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Stumbled over this in the library. Was like reading a 320 page rant by Baron Silas Greenback. Great fun!!<br />
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Basically had a crack about everything from the cosmetics industry, alternative medicine, “nutritionismâ€, big pharma, MRSA scares and the MMR hoax.<br />
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Some seriously scary stuff in there, especially how easily led the general public can be on the back of a cult of personality, and the media’s need to sensationalise in search of profits.<br />
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His emotions are quite clear throughout the book …<br />
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He does try and explain “science†in as much as it’s all about experimenting, testing hypotheses, proper use of statistics, trying to avoid bias in your deductions and putting your findings up for criticism – which at times got nerdy (author’s own description) – as opposed to weird-arse claims like “eat green leaf vegetables as the chlorophyll gives you oxygenâ€, and the claim that “free radicals†are good for you.<br />
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Homeopathy was well in his sights. I know we had a thread on here a month or two back but I must have skipped over the details as I didn’t realise just how stupid it is: i.e., infusing water with ingredients that replicate symptoms, banging the solution on a surface so the water “remembers†the ingredient, then diluting the water to such an extent that to have any single molecule of the ingredient left in it would require a volume of water equivalent to a sphere with the diameter of the earth’s orbit of the sun … and then making a sugar pill out of it. So scary it’s funny.<br />
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Seems to have a particular hatred for alternative medicines, he has a crack at some British media personalities (Gillian McKeith – who is some sort of diet “guru†– Pommie based Ferners may have come across her), identifies the MRSA superbug scares as being the result of a testing laboratory run out of a garden shed by a bloke with a mail order “PhDâ€, and generally has a crack at any organisation (including the established big pharmaceutical companies) who use distorted data to sell a point of view.<br />
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But most important of all, in his chapter on [b]perception bias[/b], is his conclusion that “[b]the behaviour of sporting teams which wear black is rated as more aggressive and unfair than teams which wear white[/b]†is a result of “disproportionate bias†(chapter 12, page 237)*.<br />
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I see he has more data here - [url="http://www.badscience.net/"]http://www.badscience.net/[/url]<br />
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- some may claim this is "cherry picking" ...
- An exploration of the misunderstanding, misuse and misapplication of science in mainstream media and public relations, and how public conceptions have been manipulated as a result.<br />
